


Don't wake the house

by sshysmm



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cigarettes, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Men Crying, Sexuality, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Tears, Unrequited Love, the band Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23173672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: It's been two days sinceeverythinghappened at the end ofCheckmate. Between an encounter with a holding cell, restricted hospital visiting times, and the dawning realisation that he's lost Francis just as surely as if he'd actually died, Jerott Blyth is having a really bad time processing things. A familiar - but not too familiar - face helps him through it [the OC fromthis ficif you want to read their previous encounter].-I feel like I need to explain myself: I kept making myself sad about Jerott at the end ofCheckmateand wanted to let him be sad, too. I figured I already had an OC who he might be able to be sad around, and all I needed was an excuse to get the OC in the right place at the right time. Et voilà! Self-indulgent emotional hurt/comfort of, I assure you, the highest order.Title paraphrased from the lyrics to'When a Man Cries' by The Divine Comedy.
Relationships: Jerott Blyth/Original Male Character
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2
Collections: Lymond fics set in the Band/'80s AU





	1. Chapter 1

The last forty-eight hours had contained one instant of peace, and Jerott Blyth hated the memory of it.

For a matter of heartbeats, he had been able to give the person he loved most in the world everything that they craved. He had been their assistant, their avenger, their first mourner.

He had thought he could live with the consequences of those actions, but then the universe had remembered its sense of humour. And then, like a dog being confronted with its own vomit, he had faced the knowledge that it could never have been a mercy but would only ever have been a murder.

Since that moment, all existence had consisted of: hands pushing and pulling him, raised voices shouting his name, bruises covering his torso, skin missing from his knuckles, the pinch of handcuffs, the antiseptic smell of holding cells and hospitals. People going on, fighting for life around him as he wondered what for.

Doors had been closing in his face repeatedly. On the other side of doors families had been drawing together, loved ones had been reaffirming vows of responsibility and care. It was not that no one thought about Jerott - he had been retrieved from his cell and there had been words of comfort in the hospital; careful gestures; careful eyes. But no one knew what to say to him. No one knew how to look at him.

It had not, in the end, been hard to end up alone.

He sat in the empty hall of the hotel, where the awards ceremony had never taken place, and stared at his cooling coffee, his burning cigarette, his untouched whisky. He flexed his torn hand and wondered why he could not feel the pain anymore. It seemed to him that pain was all he should feel, and yet he felt nothing; just empty and slow.

The bar had closed some time ago and the August night swelled to press against the vast room. Tables covered in white linen seemed to float outside the darkness, and Jerott sat among them, adrift.

From the lobby he was barely visible, just a bowed head and a cloud of heavy smoke, polo shirt and jeans incongruous among the formal dress of the furniture. He cut a small, forlorn figure, even for the sympathetic pair of eyes that searched him out.

Jerott could not have made himself turn to face the new arrival even if he had heard their footsteps approach. Expensive leather soles glided across plush carpet; white silk moved soundlessly against itself; Jerott's visitor sighed and waited to be noticed.

He waited, and he watched as nothing happened.

"You're gonna burn your fingers."

Jerott blinked. The end of his cigarette had come close to his skin and the voice that addressed him seemed as recognisable and discomforting as the memory of a dream.

He rubbed his face with his free hand and turned his head a little to acknowledge the other.

Neat black suit trousers, ruthlessly pressed, led up to a narrow waist covered by an aquamarine t-shirt. The white silk of an oversized jacket cascaded over both, ruched to conceal hands in pockets, an insouciant, impatient sway to straight hips.

Thinking made Jerott feel dizzy, so he hid his eyes behind his hand. He simply had nothing to say to this person, whoever they were.

Warm fingers brushed his without shame and took the burning end of the cigarette butt from him. Metal slid on metal, there was the effortless, evocative sound of a zippo working and the smell of smooth, rich tobacco drifted towards him anew. The same confident touch manipulated his hand to hold the new cigarette and gently, insistently, invited Jerott to raise it to his mouth.

He managed to part his dry lips and draw deeply on the filter, and the taste sent a shudder through his whole body.

His visitor took a seat on the next chair, pulling up the thighs of fitted trousers and fastidiously arranging the petal-like hem of the white jacket.

As he smoked, nicotine went straight to Jerott's chest like a defibrillator, and he coughed and blinked rapidly, and drew his eyes away from the surface of the untouched coffee.

"Fucking hell," was all he managed to say when he recognised the man sitting next to him.

Jerott took another lungful of smoke and stared in old-fashioned awe at the hazel-green eyes of a Danish man called Peder. He rubbed his brows and nose again. His sinuses ached like rods of ice were criss-crossing the inside of his skull and he could not really understand why this spectre had visited him if not to assign another measure of guilt.

Peder, Jerott supposed, looked not dissimilar to how he had looked four years earlier, in a different hotel. It seemed strange to Jerott that he should manage to form a judgement on this, given that his memories of Peder were defined largely by the sickly, uneasy haze of a great deal of alcohol.

"I was just in the lobby and saw you. I understand you've had a pretty awful couple of days," Peder said, his voice light with the same reassuring lilt that had charmed Jerott against his better instincts once before.

"Yeah?" he grunted. "You just happened to be here?"

Peder examined the tar staining the filter of his own cigarette and worked his tongue around his mouth. "I'm staying in this hotel with my sister and her daughter. We came over for the awards show and gig, actually."

Jerott's expression coiled with new horror. Peder could say it as nonchalantly as he liked, but Jerott knew he should feel guilty and he did. "Fuck. Sorry, man."

"I didn't see _you_ standing in the middle of the crowd with a revolver," said Peder softly. "You tackled an armed man. It's that man who's to blame for what happened the other day."

Jerott drew in the deepest breath of smoke he could before exhaling steadily through his nose. He shook his head. "That's not what happened."

"It's what I saw from where I was standing with my niece. It's what I've seen on the news bulletins all day."

Something inside Jerott started to shake, and he was not sure what it was. It felt like the first loosening of a bolt in a machine, one that would rattle and increase its rattling and bring other parts along with it until the whole thing collapsed. His breath seemed to vibrate inside him and he blinked tired, stinging eyes. "I can't do this," he muttered.

Peder sat back but seemed to reassess Jerott's tone. He smoked and looked at him, piercing eyes - now green like a canopy, now rich brown like forest floor - seeking out all the edges of Jerott's grief.

Jerott held Peder's gaze until his eyes hurt, which was barely a few seconds, and then he sighed, tried to laugh, and felt himself come dangerously close to crying. He smoked with vindictive urgency and kept his eyelids lowered. When the cigarette was finished, he stubbed it out, hard, and felt Peder stare at his grazed knuckles.

Jerott slumped against his chair. The precarious isolation he had existed in before Peder arrived had been drawn back, and Jerott felt on the cusp of some monstrous transformation. He hid his fists in his armpits and felt his whole body tremble.

"I should go," he tried to say, but the words slipped up against one another. He lips felt numb and swollen.

Peder, who had realised there was more to this than delayed shock and unaccustomed heroics, took his jacket off and swept it around Jerott's hunched, restless shoulders. "I don’t think you should be alone like this."

Jerott had waited too long to leave. The fragile peace he had managed to hold on to could not withstand this open sympathy. Unlike his bandmates and friends, Peder had penetrated a considerable way beyond Jerott's boundaries already, and Jerott was not equipped to keep him at arm's length. At the same time, Peder did not know that Jerott had caused this pain himself, he could not judge Jerott in the light of every other stupid, impulsive, lovelorn thing he had done over the last years - just on the one.

The choked heat of emotion made Jerott's eyes ache right through, and the first tears slipped between his screwed shut eyelids. He swore and his hands shook harder, and one loss of control seemed to urge on all the others, no matter how tightly he wrapped his arms around his body, how often he told himself to pull it together.

He tasted salt gather in the corners of his mouth and he could not struggle against it when a gentle touch encouraged him to stand and enveloped him in a hug. It was easier to let his head fall against the unyielding warmth of the other man's shoulder, to feel another pair of arms soothe the shivers running through Jerott's body, to let himself be held and rocked gently like a child. There were only a handful of people he might have accepted such treatment from.

He didn't make a sound beyond the intermittent sharp grasping for air, each lungful coming with the fresh scent of Peder's body. He still had hopes of binding this embarrassing fracture, of repairing the barrier that had failed and pulling himself back together.

It wouldn't stop though. He couldn't breathe if he tried to stop, and his body shook with a violence that frightened him enough to just make him cry harder. He could no more have made himself cease than he could have interfered with the careful guidance which led him from the empty hall, through the empty lobby and into the elevator. Under bright lights he kept his eyes shut painfully tight against the collar of Peder's t-shirt and Peder smoothed his shoulders and stroked his hair and muttered words in Danish that were just soft collisions of nonsense sounds against Jerott's ear.

Peder did not try to ask Jerott where his room was. He led him to his own suite and left the key card by the door and tried to set Jerott down on the chair by the window, though Jerott's fists clung to Peder's tight top and he bowed his head to his knees to hide his face when Peder tried to step back.

"Let me get you some water."

Jerott shook his head vehemently, afraid of losing the warm, dark comfort of the other body, and Peder relented and gathered him to his arms again. It seemed to give renewed strength to Jerott's grief, and he gasped with a sound of anguish against Peder's body.

Peder lay with him on the bed covers, Jerott's body curled towards him, his tears leaving dark, damp stains on Peder's t-shirt. If he was surprised or disappointed by the extent of the episode he did not say anything, but rubbed Jerott's back and kissed his hairline and told him lies about things being all right, when it was clear that something had been very, very wrong for longer than Jerott Blyth had ever admitted to himself or anyone else.

Once lost in the tempest of his pain, Jerott's mind could only pause its blunt, aching struggle where emotion had buffeted it. He cried for what had happened that day, what he had done and not done, what his marriage had been and what lies he had told, for years wasted in support of a sick cause, for a girl who had not been who she was in her letters to him, for his father, who he had loved and had not known how to save or how to mourn. He cried until his whole face felt raw, like he had been beaten, deservingly, by the things he thought he could ignore and no longer could. He cried selfishly, because he wanted only to be loved and he knew that he was, but not how he needed to be loved. He cried because love was not fair and he cried because this was such a blindingly, childishly obvious realisation that he hated himself for being hurt by it.

He was sorry to burden a near-stranger with all of this, which he felt, irrationally, would be searingly legible to the other in the way his breath heaved and the way he could no longer stop the sounds of self-pity tearing at his throat. But Peder had seen more of him than any other man already, and he had been discreet - no tell-all stories in the tabloids had followed that night in Dublin, no requests for free tickets or backstage access. It had been a memory that existed all on its own, that Jerott could not link to any other part of him until now, when he realised he was crying about that night too, and how grateful he had been for Peder's kindness and generosity.

Jerott was almost bereft of his self when the tears finally subsided. He felt ruined, shattered, like a burst dam: his chest and throat were jagged and splintered wreckage and his face was saturated land, buried and changed by the flood. His body lay heavy on the bed, his hands were stiff claws, all parts of his physical form seemed now the concern of someone else.

Peder got up and Jerott lay still, his eyes puffy, unfocused and uncomfortable. He wondered if he should leave, if he should feel guilty about the liberty taken here. He sighed and wondered whether all his feelings had been swept clean out of him along with the tears.

He had not managed to move, or to decide what he should do next when the bed shifted under Peder's weight again. A firm hand took Jerott's arm and turned him onto his back, and a cool, clean flannel was drawn across his over-worked features. He closed his eyes and thought he might start crying again at this unnecessary kindness. Peder murmured "Shhh, shhh," and carefully refreshed Jerott's face, cleaning away the drying salt water and residue.

"Now you have to sit up, I'm sorry," Peder told him, and Jerott thought he might have laughed if he felt he could move his features. What on earth did Peder have to be sorry for?

He did as he was asked, with Peder's assistance, and drank the water he was offered, with Peder's assistance. It reminded him what it might be like to feel normal again.

When he had finished one glass of water, in a moment of clarity, he realised it was foolish to feel guilty about the care being given, and he wanted to thank Peder. He moved to rub his eyes and the Dane caught his hands and kissed his grazed knuckles.

"Don't do that. You'll make it feel worse. I'm going to get some more water."

Jerott managed to mumble a sound that was recognisable as gratitude and sat obediently, sniffing and pulling at his fingers, cracking each knuckle to distract himself from the overwhelming need to cover up his aching face. Peder lay a soft hand on his swollen cheek in acknowledgement of this. It was cool by contrast with his hot skin, and Jerott leaned against it.

Then Peder left again and returned, and Jerott drank what he could while listening to Peder tell him he could sleep in his bed. Peder said he would go to the armchair now and Jerott grabbed for him, hands wrapping desperately in the stretched and stained fabric of the other man's top. He leaned his forehead into Peder's neck. "Please. I don't want to wake up alone."

Long, fine fingers ran through his hair and Peder sighed and agreed to stay. They lay facing each other beneath the covers, over-warm and fully clothed; Jerott's head against Peder's chest and Peder's jaw resting among long black hair.

It didn't take long for Jerott to fall asleep, and once he had, Peder let himself relax against the half-remembered body - broad shoulders that his own arms stretched around, hair smelling of cigarettes and cardamom, short, strong legs that pushed and wove their way between his. Peder remembered him honest and drunk, and now he had seen him honest and broken. Pragmatically, perhaps to soothe his shaken ego, Peder supposed a man less familiar with the stresses engendered by handling vast sums of money and internationally inflated personalities might have been daunted by the trust he had been shown. The knowledge that only he had been witness to these personal enormities. Instead, Peder chose to find it oddly touching - as though, on some level, Jerott had recognised Peder's capacity to care where few others had.

He had not known what to expect when he went to check on the lonely figure in the hall; had been uncertain of the response he had been hoping for. When Jerott broke down, Peder had only known that the moment was no longer about him, and that he had volunteered himself as the channel for releasing a depth of grief that could not have been anticipated. Even now, he did not know precisely what he had witnessed.

He closed his eyes and leaned his cheek against the other man's head. His thumbs formed circles against the muscle of Jerott's back and the feeling calmed Peder, though the other man was deep in unconsciousness. He lulled himself to sleep with the motion, unsure if he would ever find out what had been wrong, or if Jerott would be gone before he woke.


	2. Chapter 2

The headache Jerott came to with was worse than any hangover. All the things he thought he had forgotten how to feel had come crashing back, like the tide coming in. The skin on his knuckles stung and pricked where it caught on sheets and covers. His hands felt bruised to the core, as swollen as his face. His mouth was dry, and his chest felt tight, and he was aware in intimate detail of the discomfort that came from wearing jeans in bed. He lay on his back and rubbed he heel of one hand against his hot forehead and winced as the movement made his hand and his head hurt more.

When he forced his gritty eyes open and turned with a squint to the other body in the bed, it was relief, at first, that made his heart run quick.

Peder was still asleep, his hands tucked beneath the pillow, his amber hair matted and ruffled against his scalp. His long eyelashes lay still and neat, and across his cheeks and nose his freckles were more prominent than Jerott recalled. For the first time, Jerott let himself grasp hold of the thought that followed: the other man was really quite attractive. Jerott could be happy looking at those features for hours on end, he could imagine placing his lips to those lips, stroking the silk smooth curve of that ear, laying his own cheek against the chiselled lines of Peder's cheek.

Instead he turned back to the ceiling and swallowed drily. He could leave, he supposed. As he had left before: silent, afraid, part of him wanting the other man to know that he was disgusted with himself. It seemed a pointless thing to lie like that after last night's outburst though. To pretend that it did not matter to him, that he would not always be grateful for Peder's serendipitous appearance.

Jerott climbed out of bed, filled up a glass of water for himself and put the kettle on.

Peder slept long enough for Jerott to bring the mug to him, sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling shyly down.

"I don't know how you like it," he said in apology as Peder blinked and stretched his arms above the covers. His smile was a curiously sinuous thing that quickly burst into a broad grin. He sat up and took the mug from Jerott's hand.

"Black is perfect."

"Barbarian," Jerott grinned, though his face felt stiff when he did so.

Peder sipped the drink and looked at Jerott candidly. "I prefer 'viking'."

He said it with a soft 'w' sound that Jerott realised he might even have termed cute.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like shit," Jerott laughed. He eyed Peder's carefully mischievous expression. "I know, I look like shit as well, right?"

"I've seen you looking better."

Jerott blushed furiously, but it was a tentative pride that swelled his chest when he looked down at his own mug.

"I've got some painkillers," Peder told him. "And if you want to use the shower here, you're more than welcome."

Jerott bit his lip. "I should call the hospital."

"Use my phone," Peder told him without pause.

The number was in his pocket and Jerott dialled for an outside line. He looked only at the creased scrap of paper and his own restless fingers drumming on the edge of the furniture. It rang and rang until he wondered if he was only hearing the echo of the rings, but at last a receptionist picked up.

"I want to ask about a patient who was admitted two nights ago."

There was some back and forth and the receptionist took pity on his exhausted tones and told Jerott that Marthe was "Stable, and as comfortable as they could make her." She had coped well overnight, the previous day's surgeries seemed to have been successful.

Jerott thanked her and said he would visit again later.

He put the phone down and no sooner had his mind articulated its next thought - that he would really fucking like a cigarette - than he felt Peder at his side, handing over one of the two he had just lit. "She's ok?"

Jerott sighed at the crisp taste of the cigarette and closed his eyes, cocooned within his own cloud of smoke. "She's been shot twice in the chest. There's a long way to go yet."

"Still not your fault," Peder reminded him, and Jerott smiled thinly.

Jerott downed a painkiller, paced with his tea and cigarette and examined the over-tub shower in Peder's ensuite. His room only had a shower cubicle, and he thought longingly of being able to soak his bruised body, of submerging his whole face beneath warm, clean water. He had other, more hesitant thoughts about what could happen if he lay naked in the room adjacent to Peder's bedroom, and wondered whether he ought to be contemplating such things. Across the city, his estranged wife fought for her life, and he knew it was his fault. Then again, if he did what he was thinking about doing she would have something to live for: collecting on the bets she'd made or taking the chance to say she'd been right all along.

"You said I could use the shower," Jerott said carefully. "Don't you have to be anywhere, do anything?"

Peder sat open-legged on the armchair, smoking and examining the water marks on his top. He looked up with surprise, and what Jerott hoped was a genuine look of pleasure in his eyes. "We had nothing planned for today. You can stay, if you want."

"Can I use the bath?" Jerott blurted before he could have second thoughts.

Peder blinked and shrugged. "Yeah, of course," he looked over Jerott, assessing whether or not there was anything more to the request, and took another drag of his cigarette. "You want me to make some more tea and order up breakfast?"

Jerott's grin, and the impatient growl of his stomach were answer enough. Peder laughed and gestured to the bathroom. "Go ahead!"

The water ran luxuriously warm without much need to wait. The hotel bath salts fizzed and released a heady smell designed to emulate fresh sea breeze and tropical paradise. Jerott toed the bathroom door to but did not shut it firmly as he undressed. His shirt and jeans, socks and underwear pooled together on the floor and he examined what he could see of himself in the mirror as it hazed over with steam: his chest cross-hatched with black hair that hid the bruising, his brown face still swollen in unfamiliar ways around his eyes and cheeks. His hair looked lank and greasy and the shadows under his eyes were purple and uncomfortable. He shook his head at himself and climbed into the full tub of water and hissed at its heat against his body.

The temperature was almost uncomfortable, but it was what he wanted. He put his hands on the edges of the tub and lay back, feeling his hair float and feather around his face as he pushed himself below the surface. The wounds on his hands screamed in fresh anguish at the unsympathetic water but it felt like his face and body were rearranging into more familiar forms beneath the water's touch.

Jerott emerged with a splash and a gasp and swept water and hair back from his face. He reached for the flannel Peder had used on him the previous night and soaked it with fresh cold water before pressing his face into it.

He missed the first knock and its follow-up, so when he looked up, he saw the door swinging slowly inwards and his pulse spiked. "Hi?" he called.

Peder waited behind the door but a mug of tea appeared around its edge and Jerott laughed.

"It's ok, you can come in. Thanks." He looked up as Peder stepped inside and swallowed at the vulnerability he felt at the height difference. It might just have been the steam filling the room, but Jerott could swear he saw the colour rise in Peder's cheeks.

He handed the mug down to Jerott's outstretched hands and pulled a face at the reddened wounds on his knuckles. "Do you need anything for that?"

Jerott shook his head. "Lessons in how to punch better, maybe."

Peder sighed. He looked like he wanted to say something more, and Jerott realised with a sickening jolt that although he was beginning to feel at ease after the previous night's outpouring, Peder might still have concerns. Or questions, at the very least.

He raised his eyes to Peder's, and hoped the other man understood his plea for more time. Peder’s smile was small, but it did convey understanding.

Only after the bath, after tea and fresh, warm pastries that crumbled and stuck to lips, when Jerott lay back against the pillows, wishing they were Peder's chest, did he meet Peder's gaze with apologetic candour. He plucked at the fluffy surface of the flannel dressing gown he wore. It was cloud-thick, immaculate white like the one Peder had donned after his own shower. The Dane lay across the foot of the bed, his head propped up on one hand, his fine hair drying in soft waves that Jerott had never seen before.

Jerott felt his cheeks redden at the way the sight of Peder made him feel, and he looked away awkwardly.

"When did you know?"

He hoped he did not need to say anything else in order to be clear, and he released the breath he had held only when Peder answered with a smile.

"I kissed the girl that everyone at my high school had a crush on, and it just felt strange to me. Not even a bit nice."

Jerott snorted doubtfully and looked at the pattern on the covers. "I kissed a lot of girls at high school and I _did_ find it nice."

"So you're bi," Peder shrugged. "That's cool."

Jerott frowned and chewed the inside of his lip. The term provoked a spike of annoyance, and he did not want to explore why. He pulled at a loose thread on the sheets angrily, but it would not snap.

Finally, he sighed and rolled his eyes, though Peder had not asked him to say anything. "Fine. That's his thing. It's always been his thing, he's been like that since forever, since I first knew him. If I'm that, I'm...just following in his footsteps some more. Always just behind, like a dog at his heels. Always running to keep up, following his lead, waiting for his cue."

Peder's expression flickered between amusement and exasperation and settled on something like disbelieving sympathy. "I think there's room in the world for more than one bisexual."

"Fuck off," Jerott scowled, but laughter broke through and he lobbed a pillow at Peder's face. "I'm trying to be open here, you bastard."

Peder caught the item of soft furnishing and hugged it to his chest as he lay back. "I'm listening, aren't I?" He grinned.

Jerott crawled across the bed on his elbows and slumped hard against Peder's side, so that the other man grunted and let out a sharp exhale. Jerott settled against man and pillow, and Peder's arm circled his chest so Jerott could lace his fingers through the Dane's fingers. He stared at the light fitting and sought to find an end to the feeling he needed to speak about. The search made his throat tighten again and his eyes sting again, and he held on to Peder's hand for anchorage.

"He wanted to die," Jerott finally said. "He wanted to. I thought...I thought I'd be helping him. I'd finally come to terms with it, with what he needed." His chest lurched suddenly under the shock of the next thought: _Not me._ Jerott tasted blood where his teeth tore the inside of his lip. "I knew I'd lose him. But I'd come to terms with losing him that way. And now I've lost him to another..." he rolled his head against Peder's chest and laughed hollowly. "Another way."

"To happiness," Peder said quietly.

Jerott nodded and breathed through his nose to compose himself. "Yeah. To happiness. How shitty is that? I could live with his death but not with his happiness?"

Peder's arm tightened around his body and he squeezed Jerott's hand with his.

"And instead, I..." He could not speak the alternative. "I never deserved that marriage."

Peder, who had taken more of an interest in the international tabloids' music sections since that one drunken night in Dublin, agreed.

"No, not like that," Jerott said desperately, his voice growing thick with emotion again. "I made her miserable. I disappointed her. The way I loved her...she knew it wasn't right. It wasn't all for her." His chest rose and fell rapidly beneath Peder's arm. "What if I actually wanted this? What if I wanted her to die?"

Peder disentangled his fingers from Jerott's, laid his palm soothingly on his forehead, then tucked his hand inside one half of Jerott's dressing gown and pressed it to the skin of his torso, feeling each breath build and dissipate below. "You don't want her to die. Would you be feeling like this now if you did?"

Oh Christ, he was crying again. Jerott wiped the trickle of water from his face. He gasped. He needed to say it while he still could. "I loved him. He knew it and she knew it before I ever did. It looks like vengeance, but I..." He shook his head and the tears fell down each side of his face, racing towards his hairline.

"You love him," Peder corrected gently, and Jerott nodded helplessly against his side.

"I don't want to do this again," Jerott covered his eyes and drew a deep, shaky breath. "I don't want to cry about them any more. I don't want to think about them."

Peder's hand was hot and still on the skin of his chest. Jerott sniffed and battled the emotion down. Could Peder feel the change in the way his heart ran, when he changed who he thought about?

"I want to move on," Jerott turned against Peder's body, his face leaning to try and meet the other man's eyes, feeling Peder's hand shift against Jerott's skin as he twisted, though Peder remained scrupulously still.

Peder looked at him with seriousness, his eyes lit with copper flecks, his soft hair pale without its customary layer of gel. His lips were pink like the rims of his eyes, and his freckles were more shades of brown that Jerott could have imagined, blurring into one another like raindrops on the surface of a pool.

"Will that help you move on?" Peder asked steadily.

Jerott licked his lips and rolled over to lean above Peder's face. "I don't know."

There was still something missing: the frank cheerfulness that he remembered about Peder was muted, some other side of him was at the fore, watchful and wary. "Do you really think it's a good idea, while your wife's in hospital?"

Jerott blinked and recoiled. " _What_?"

"I mean, how would you feel if something happened and you were here?"

Defensiveness burnt high and made Jerott flush red, but he held Peder's eyes. "What else should I be doing? She's stable, they say. I'm not a surgeon, visiting hours are short, so what am I supposed to do with my time? Wring my hands and pray?"

Peder's breath moved rapidly beneath the pillow he still held to his body. "Some would."

"I don't. It doesn't fucking do anything," Jerott said savagely.

Peder's eyes had widened a little, and the mossy colour of his irises came into focus against his dilated pupils. "So that's how you move on? Distraction to distraction?"

Jerott sat up and frowned at Peder's closed expression. "Are you my therapist now?"

"You don't fucking have a therapist, I can tell that much," Peder rejoined, with a bite to his voice that Jerott had never heard before. It made the heat in his body surge inquisitively, but also warned him away.

Peder shook his head, and his expression softened a little. "I'm sorry. It's my own...I didn't expect to think of you so much after Dublin."

Jerott's frown deepened thoughtfully. "What?"

With a self-deprecating attempt at a laugh, Peder hugged both arms around the pillow and gave Jerott a candid look. "I had one hell of a crush. I 'got it bad', as they say. Thought coming to see the gig would be a...fun way to check I was over it," he smiled. "And then you fall weeping into my arms and my bed again, you want to tell me all about how much you love your bandmate and then fuck the feeling away with me?"

Jerott gaped. Creeping heat rose with claws up his body and face and he shook his head. "I...you...I didn't fall into your arms," he said.

Peder rolled his eyes. "You're such a..." He sighed. "How the fuck did you get like this? What the hell happened to you?"

Unsure how the question should be interpreted, Jerott pouted at a point just beyond Peder's shoulder. He tried to think of an honest response but kept running into the problem of working out just what it was he had been asked. "My father died when I was seventeen?" He suggested. "No, eighteen. I. It was near my birthday. I don't remember."

Peder covered his face with his hands and made a noise that was like a scream or a wail, but it was swallowed up by laughter. "Your father? Oh, fucking hell. Fucking hell. What's wrong with _me_?"

Jerott waited for Peder to remove his hands and cocked a perplexed eyebrow at him. To his gratification, Peder bit his lower lip when Jerott did so, and his cheekbones reddened.

"So, you are going to psychoanalyse me?" Jerott asked.

Peder shook his head, his eyes wide. "No..." He tossed the pillow aside and sat up, nose to nose with Jerott, smelling of shower gel and the cinnamon in the pastries. "I'm going to fuck you."

He kissed Jerott while Jerott's mouth was open and slid his tongue inside without resistance as Jerott made a small, willing sound. If he hadn't been half-hard already that would have done it. Peder's hands were inside his dressing gown, running over the furrows of his ribcage, grasping and pulling Jerott close as Jerott's own hands tugged the knotted belt of Peder's gown. All he could hear was the roaring of his own blood in his veins, the choir of his body holding one perfect, harmonious note that told him he would not regret this.

"If that sounds agreeable to you?" Peder asked, each word a brush of his mouth over Jerott's.

"Yes," Jerott kissed him. " _Yes_."


	3. Chapter 3

Jerott watched Peder return to the bed, stepping over the cast off, tumbled duvet and covers that littered the floor. Peder's long legs were beach-tanned at this time of year, the fine golden hairs paler than his toffee-coloured skin. His torso was a little lighter, but the tan line left by what must have been a minute pair of speedos still make Jerott shake his head and laugh.

"What is it?" Peder asked, coming to a stop by the bed.

Jerott looked up at him, his head propped on one arm, and smiled beatifically. He reached up with his other hand and stroked a thumb over the milk white rise of Peder's hip bone. Mischief in his dark eyes, he watched Peder's narrow chest rise and fall quickly, watched him bite his lip as Jerott's fingers ran over the smooth, shaved skin of his groin. Impulsively, Jerott sat up and laid his lips over the skin his fingers had been toying with, tasting where their sweat had mingled, prodding gently at the flavour with the tip of his tongue and running his teeth over the firm swell of bone at Peder's hip.

Peder chuckled, but it was a hot, strangled thing, and he reached down to push Jerott's forehead back, leaning his face up and removing his mouth from Peder's skin.

The sparkling charm that made Jerott feel like he mattered to this person had returned. Peder's hazel eyes roved over his face with lingering care, his smile was wondering and sweet. He moved his hand back through Jerott's hair and Jerott let his eyes close at the touch.

The mattress shifted and squeaked as Peder's knees depressed it and he clambered over Jerott's stretched form. He lay down beside Jerott, his body a warm line of touch from his chest against Jerott's shoulders to his toes tucked under Jerott's feet.

Peder leaned over him and traced the edge of Jerott's jaw with his fingers.

"You're not doing much to help me get rid of this crush," he said softly. When he spoke his neat amber brows rose a little and his mouth curved enough to leave a dimple in his cheek.

Jerott smiled and closed his eyes. He didn't know what it was that he was meant to feel, his emotions were still reeling from recent events, though his body was filled with a simple glow of satisfaction. He knew that he liked to be looked at the way Peder was looking at him, and he liked to be touched the way Peder touched him, and he knew that it had been no lie or trick played against himself when he had decided he found Peder gorgeous.

Peder did not push him to reply, though Jerott thought he would have preferred to hear something encouraging or witty on Jerott's lips. He offered what he could instead, and pulled Peder down to kiss him: softly, his touches slow, savouring the salty, smoky flavours that adhered to Peder's tongue.

He dozed again in Peder's arms, and only woke when the phone rang at some point in the early afternoon. The room smelled stale with cigarette smoke and trapped sunlight, with their two bodies and all that they had done with them. Jerott listened sleepily to Peder talk in Danish and knew that his time in this sanctuary had come to its end.

Peder was going to the zoo with his sister and niece - he joked that he would invite Jerott, only he would have to listen to his niece interrogate Jerott about Lymond and his foibles all afternoon. Jerott managed to laugh and was glad not to be asked outright.

Before he left he found himself held against the door, his hips bucking against Peder's through their clothes, his hands bunched in Peder's loose hair and Peder's mouth bruisingly hard on his mouth. In his pocket he had a piece of hotel paper with an address and a clutch of phone numbers written on it. They made no promises to one another, but at the farewell, each made their regret at parting clear.

Jerott sauntered reluctantly down the hotel corridor, his fingers rubbing at the thickening stubble around his mouth. He looked back often, but there was no way to change the fact that he was once again alone with his own company. He took the stairs to give the journey variety, and entered his pristine room with a frown.

It wasn't his clothes that smelled of Peder as much as his skin, and Jerott ran his own fingers around the back of his neck and leaned back for an instant, remembering the feeling of Peder's hands supporting him, his body arching to be close to Peder's body, his touch fumbling to follow Peder's touch.

He sighed and bit his lip and thought about spending the afternoon in those memories. Visiting hours at the hospital did not begin for some time, and he might have given in to the temptation if the phone had not rung just as he pushed his shoes off.

"Hello?"

A cacophony of voices erupted down the line.

"Och _now_ he picks up!"

"He's th-there?"

"Jerott, where have ye been?"

"Do you know - do you _know_ \- how, how many times I've tried that number today?"

"Lucky first attempt! Jerott, what Archie and Adam are trying to say is that they've been worried sick about you - as have all your friends." Kate Somerville spoke in rich and soothing tones. "Myself included. Are you all right?"

Bemused, Jerott leaned against the wall and, scratching his unshaven chin, he gave a small, grateful laugh. "Yeah, I'm all right. Thanks."

"You sound all right," Kate's voice smiled.

"Where has he _been_?" Adam's voice came through, muffled and distant.

"Jerott, if you would like to join us, we're meeting in the lobby in a few minutes. We thought we would go on an expedition - in search of ice cream."

Outside the hotel window the sky was patched with high, drifting white clouds. The sun sparkled on cars and buildings and the sunglasses of people on the streets.

"Yeah. Go on then," Jerott shrugged.

He shaved and changed into fresh clothes, confident in the knowledge that enough of him still belonged, and maybe always would belong, to Peder's touch. He rifled the worn edges of the photographs he kept in his wallet and added the paper with Peder's contact details to the collection.

His shoulders back and chin up, he was not the picture of hungover despair his friends perhaps expected when he came trotting down the hotel stairs. Hands in the pockets of his pale jeans, short-sleeved navy polo shirt immaculately fitted, aviators on and jaw smooth, Jerott looked, in all, suspiciously together.

He stopped in front of Adam and Archie with a curt nod. "Hi."

Adam shook his head and opened his mouth, and glared at Archie when the shorter man elbowed him.

Nearby, Kate was talking to a desk porter, and she leaned over the counter to accept a telephone receiver.

"Kate's just seeing if Philippa and Francis are joining us," Adam said stiffly.

It wasn't said in order to crack Jerott's composure, but Adam must have known it had the potential to do so. Jerott's mouth pulled into a grimace and he ducked his head swiftly to light a cigarette. "That'll be nice."

"We called that number _dozens_ of times today, Jerott." Adam's eyes were wide, grey and pale and his stammer interrupted the words. The winding scar that split his features was livid against his long white face. "Where have you been?"

Jerott glanced at the desk and gathered that Kate's conversation was going to be more than a swift confirmation of details with Philippa. He sighed and swept his sunglasses back to rest in his hair. He knew that there were still shadows under his eyes, and that his colour was uneven and his eyelids were tender from crying, but Adam was interested in the size of his pupils, and on that, Jerott was happy to prove himself. He stared back and drew from his cigarette. "I didn't go far."

Archie laid a calming hand on Adam's elbow and peered likewise at Jerott's face. "Ye look rested, lad."

Jerott's eyes wandered again towards Kate, waiting to see what he needed to steel himself for. "Yeah..." he agreed.

She returned the receiver over the counter, thanked the desk staff and came back to the three of them with a beaming smile and a hug for Jerott. "It's good to see you," she rubbed his arm. He didn't feel he knew her that well, but that did not dim the warmth of Kate's affection when she had decided someone was worthy of it. "You look well, Jerott. I hope you've been taking care of yourself?"

He nodded ambivalently and tightened his lips on his cigarette. "Are they coming?"

Kate's eyes moved warily from his to Adam's to Archie's. She paused, and then masked the flash of disappointment that showed. "Not today! Francis is a little wobbly still, it seems. Though I have been asked to bring back a tub of pistachio so they don't feel left out."

Jerott lowered his sunglasses discreetly and blew out a lungful of smoke. The tension dissipated from his shoulders and guts, and he was glad not to have the morning's peace tested in quite such an overt way. For now, in blank moments, his thoughts ran to a completely different room in the building, and brought only comfort, not the twisting worry he was used to associating with Francis.

Adam gave him a subtle, sympathetic smile as they turned towards the doors, and Jerott laid a friendly clap on his shoulder.

"You're ok?" Adam checked.

Jerott managed a smirk with a warmth of its own. "I will be."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here's a picture of the guys enjoying their ice cream.](https://notasapleasure.tumblr.com/post/612765238763372544/gelato-with-friends-to-help-forget-the-absolute)
> 
> And I'm not averse to writing the scene between the last chapter and this one, but if anyone wants to read it they're going to have to ask me for it, I had to stop myself before this 'short, self-indulgent ficlet' became another 10,000 word monstrosity.
> 
> But if you read it, whether or not you want the missing scene, then please know you have my heartfelt and eternal thanks :D


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